Shipwreck’s astonishing descent into the beach starts speeding up on Outer Banks
The strange tale of an Outer Banks shipwreck sinking into dry land has taken a turn for the worse, as the boat’s descent appears to be speeding up.
Photos posted Friday on Facebook show the 72-foot vessel is now hull-deep in the beach, with only its wheelhouse and rigging sticking out of the sand on Bodie Island.
Outer Banks homeowner Angie Maslar posted side-by-side comparison photos, revealing it sank by about 2 feet in the past few weeks.
Experts say this due to a combination of sinking and sand piling up on top of the boat.
“Get there soon if you want to see it!” Maslar wrote with the photos.
“You can’t even see the bow anymore. Seems like by the end of the summer only a few parts could be sticking up. ... One good storm could really speed up the process though,” she told McClatchy News in an email.
The boat, named Ocean Pursuit, ran aground 50 yards off Hatteras National Seashore on March 1, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. What caused it to run ground has never been explained, but a crew of three was rescued, the Coast Guard reported.
National Park Service officials say the boat is appearing to sink because each high tide makes the sand beneath the hull soft and malleable. However, there’s more to it than just settling deeper into the sand, officials say.
“Although there could be some sinking going on, generally speaking, these shipwrecks and other objects are being covered with sand that is accreting on the beach,” according to David Hallac, superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina.
“They will often become uncovered after severe erosion associated with storms,” he said in an email.
Winds have also carried the boat closer to land, prompting the National Park Service to issue an alert for visitors to stop boarding the boat or risk injury.
The Ocean Pursuit has now become something of a tourist attraction and hot social media topic, including a series of stop motion videos on YouTube.
Malsar, a teacher with a home in Rodanthe, told McClatchy News in an email that she heard about it on Facebook and went to take photos April 21. She returned May 14 and was surprised at how much farther it had sunk.
“I think it’s pretty wild how fast the boat went from being stuck on a sandbar out in the water to being on the beach,” she told McClatchy News.
“It is the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’, so people do like to visit shipwrecks here.”
This story was originally published May 17, 2020 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Shipwreck’s astonishing descent into the beach starts speeding up on Outer Banks."